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Monday, January 20, 2014

customer service and other first world problems: a story in GIF format

Lumberjack is an I-can-do-anything sort of guy by day, and an RN by night. (Shh. We try not to talk about it too much.) But as it happens, he has to wear scrubs, and somehow he believes that scrubs - like socks and underwear - should be worn until they are disintegrating or threadbare, whichever comes first, and replacement is not an option because maybe I should be darning them or something.

And I'm like,

So when the scrubs finally give out, and he realizes I'm not darning them, and he has to order new ones, that whole decision making process takes about a month and a half all in one sitting, because it's not every day you get to buy new scrubs and decision-making is not his favorite thing in the world.

So he's like,

and I'm like,

and he finally decides and I finally order. Click. Yay. And I'm like,

AND THEN, almost beating the Order Confirmation email to my inbox is an Order Cancellation announcement because somehow we ordered an Out of Stock item. And I'm like,

I finally track down the scrub top elsewhere, which proves to be a little trickier than necessary because CarharttSizeLargeinPewterBrushedMicro seems to be an extremely rare combination or something. But the important thing is that it gets ordered. Finally. And I'm like,

Scrubs arrive, they fit, they look dashing, hurray. But why end this story there?

The following week, I notice in our online banking that a certain retail giant whose name I shall not give away but it rhymes with Spamazon CHARGED US ANYWAY five days later for the cancelled order. And I'm like,

So I log onto their Chat with Customer Service option and explain the problem. I get a nice CS rep whose name is full of consonants and hardly any vowels. I explain my problem and get a bunch of canned one-liners back which do nothing to address the problem. And I'm like,

And when the CS rep says, "I looked up your order. It appears it was canceled on 1/15/14 after you ordered it," I'm definitely like,

But when I'm actually told that no, their company didn't actually charge me for the item, I'm really like,

And then I get patched through to a CS rep on the phone.

Now here's a big ol' message I want to send to any company in the known universe who employs a customer service team. Get people whose first language is the language of the angry customer calling in. And as long as I'm putting in that request, I think I'd like to go so far as to be dialect-specific.

This seems obvious. A customer service squad is going to be dealing with calls and complaints from people who are frustrated. People who are irate. People who just got charged for an order that was cancelled immediately. People who desire effective, courteous, clear communication. And when the CS rep has extreme language barriers, it only makes the problem worse. And when I say I want dialect-specific, I mean that if I'm a frustrated customer calling in, I don't want someone from eastern Kentucky and I don't want someone from New Jersey. Heck, there are people from my own hometown I can't even understand. I want someone from the Midwest, speaking plain-as-water-soup.

And that goes for any language, by the way. I fully intend on never pursuing a career in foreign customer service affairs. It wouldn't be fair to the people calling in.

I'll be done with that soapbox for now. The CS rep on the phone also tried to insist that my own eyes were deceiving me and that although my bank statement showed $23 deducted that I actually somehow wasn't really charged. And I'm like,

We played a game called Who Can Irritate The Other Person Fastest and I'm not sure who won. At the end of the day, a refund hit our bank account for something that supposedly wasn't charged in the first place, my name has an equal number of consonants and vowels, and Lumberjack's scrubs fit. Because if they didn't, and we had to return and re-order, I'd be like,

who she is

well, hi there! glad you stopped by. feel free to sit a spell.
I'm Corrie. I make my home with Lumberjack and a houseful of daughters.
we live real life in a 100-year-old farmhouse that falls apart all the time. [the farmhouse, that is. and sometimes life, too.] we're good at laughing, crying, and the occasional freak-out. this is where I live to write about it.